One space or two after a full-stop?

[oracleslave]

One space is correct, two is wrong. As a technical author, most places I work have "remove double spaces" as part of the document clean-up process. For people like you.

I feel a certain amount of relief at having that cleared up. The stress and tension of not knowing was killing me to the degree that I have been daydreaming about a pot noodle.

[Bob Dalek]

I feel a certain amount of relief at having that cleared up. The stress and tension of not knowing was killing me to the degree that I have been daydreaming about a pot noodle.

Which flavour?

[oracleslave]

Which flavour?

Bombay bad boy.

[TheFaQQer]

One space is correct, two is wrong. As a technical author, most places I work have "remove double spaces" as part of the document clean-up process. For people like you.

Interesting - it's something that O'Reilly and Macgraw Hill ask for in the books that they publish.

[Bob Dalek]

Bombay bad boy.

Good choice.

[Bagpuss]

"Today, you wouldn't believe it! I found a document with three spaces when there should have been two"

"Nice dear, More peas?"

[Platypus]

Interesting - it's something that O'Reilly and Macgraw Hill ask for in the books that they publish.

They ask for one or two spaces?

[Platypus]

One space is correct, two is wrong. As a technical author, most places I work have "remove double spaces" as part of the document clean-up process. For people like you.

Grrr now I'd better go back and change them all back again!

Hurray, now all sing the contractors' song

[TheFaQQer]

They ask for one or two spaces?

O'Reilly and Macgraw Hill ask for two spaces after a full stop.

IIRC, it's also what CMOS recommends, but their search is down at the moment.

[NickFitz]

Right, hands up if you've ever set metal type by hand and operated a traditional printing press?



Just me? Thought so...

Right, so traditionally there are six thicknesses of space: em (which is square for the font size), en (half-em), thick (one-third em), mid (one-quarter em), thin (one-fifth em) and hair space (one point or less).

Assuming unjustified text, the traditional indents (in the UK and US) are:

word spacing: thick (one-third em);
sentence spacing: en (one-half em);
paragraph indent: em (one em).

With the advent of the typewriter, which used a monospace font because of its mechanical limitations, it became impossible to have a thick space between words and an en space between sentences. Therefore the custom was adopted of using two spaces to separate sentences.

Note that this custom only made sense in the context of the limitations of a device mechanically constrained to monospaced characters. This constraint does not apply to modern technology.

However, early WYSIWYG word processors capable of using proportional-width fonts still tended to only provide one width of space, so the practice persisted. Modern phototypesetting systems, and systems such as TeX, are I believe capable of automatically increasing the width of a space at the end of a sentence, but I'm not sure if such things as Word are capable of doing this. If such an option is, in fact, buried somewhere in its many configuration options then it renders the use of two spaces redundant: simply configure your software appropriately to expand the single space to the desired width.

If there is no such option, then you have a choice: continue to use two spaces as an approximation to the typesetting style of Victorian printers as adapted to the mechanical typewriter, or use one.

As with so many matters of style, it doesn't actually matter which you choose as long as you are consistent. There is no "right" or "wrong" way; it's a matter of personal preference.

Working within an organisation one should, of course, adopt their house style - if they have one. If they don't, consider forming a committee to formulate one - it's probably more interesting than working.

Here endeth the history lesson